1 week Ago
MICHAEL ETZEL’s op-ed on November 14 made some excellent observations and suggestions on how to identify less biased and more accurate news sources. However he understates the nature of the problem we face with modern media options. Organizations Etzel mentions, Ad Fontes and All Sides, do provide very useful insight on both bias and accuracy of media outlets, and our long-gone “Fairness Doctrine” sought to insure broadcast media provided some balance.
However, the driving forces are different now and the concepts of accuracy, minimal bias and fairness are shared by just a few media sources and unfortunately not a leading consideration for much of the public. Let’s first identify what we mean by media. Major media sources include newspapers (1500s), radio (1920s), and TV (1940s) with the last two using radio channels licensed by the FCC.
It was this licensing that provided the FCC with the opportunity to assert the Fairness Doctrine on the licensees. When cable TV emerged, CNN started news in 1980, the use of licensed channels no longer applied. With the advent of the internet and World Wide Web, the need for licensing, and eventually for even significant investment in equipment or staff, were eliminated.
The ability of anyone to post “news” was now available on a global basis, with a very low cost and no regulation. Today’s social media and plethora of online “news” sites reflect these technological advances. So we have un-regulated media available to anyone at near zero cost.
Money speaks. A key turning point for online media was the introduction of the advertising business model. Digital Equipment put up an early search engine, Altavista, but refused to accept advertising revenue that might be un-ethical.
Google had no such concerns and started to both make visible advertising content, and then fine tune the ability to target advertising. Initially ads were tied to keywords — if you asked about cars, you might see car ads. But by collecting massive amounts of personal data and developing sophisticated models of each individual, very focused targeting can be provided.
To be clear, every Internet user has data collected by many entities about their usage — where they go online, queries, emails, physical locations, “click-selections”, likes, friends, lists joined, etc. From this, as well as amalgamation of other sources (car registrations, deeds/property values, neighborhood demographics, etc.), additional information such as gender, race, income level, education level, political affiliation, gender preferences, etc.
, can be accumulated or inferred. In short, some of online services know more about you than almost anyone, perhaps even yourself. This allows for very focused advertising.
If you want to reach gay men who are not out-of-the-closet in greater St. Paul between 24 and 28 years old making less than $50,000 per year and living at home, your ads can be targeted to those potentially very few folks. Before Facebook cut back on the transparency of their political ad postings, many of the ads cost less than $500 to reach select groups of individuals.
Moving from the individual to the corporate view, realize that these advertising funded and driven businesses have billions of users and are among the highest revenue organizations in the world. Websites from individuals (near zero cost) can have ads placed on their sites by these corporations and they get a share of the income in exchange. A few young folks in Macedonia did this a few years back raking in over a million U.
S. dollars doing no more than presenting fake news. To engage folks with advertising, you need to have their attention.
Here is where all considerations of accuracy or fairness lose traction. It turns out that fear and outrage are what get our attention and encourage our emotional engagement, as well as our sharing of the content. As Mr.
Etzel points out, it takes effort to override your emotional response and start applying your rational thinking. It is not something we apply as much as we should. So a good lie (one that angers folks or creates fear) gets attention and gets shared well before the fact checking or truth get out.
The dopamine hits from moments of outrage and fear are addictive, so these factors combine to drive a dysfunctional “news” spiral. Consider that our adversaries in the world — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and others — know this and have an agenda to sow chaos in America and elsewhere. Consider that artificial intelligence can create well-worded content, pictures and even fake videos of national figures using their voices to fear-monger and fan outrage or just push the message of the purveyor at low cost.
These adversaries use tools we have developed and will take full advantage of them as time goes on. Mr. Etzel’s concerns about misinformation being used to trigger emotional responses that affect our decisions is both on target, and significantly understated.
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